Tracking the Status of the World’s Women

Posted on Mar 8, 2010

To mark International Women’s Day, Ms. magazine has helpfully broken down some femme-focused reports from the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, detailing how the global group’s Platform for Action empowerment program is faring after 15 years and describing the challenges and gains that women around the world are facing in 2010. Fittingly, the iconic feminist mag’s also magnified its Web presence with the launch of Ms. Blog on Monday. —KA

Ms. Blog:

Poverty: Twenty-five percent of the world population was living in extreme poverty as of 2005, compared to nearly 50 percent in 1990. But this heartening progress has been stalled, and may even be reversed, by the global economic crisis, which is expected to keep 73- to 100-million more people in poverty and disproportionately push women into economically vulnerable work. See the Millenium Development Goals Report 2009.

Education: Not as much progress here. Fifty-four percent of girls are out of school, compared to 57 percent in 2002 and 64 percent in 1990. Women make up two-thirds of the world’s illiterate. See the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2002, 2010.